


A Very Manny Christmas

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Black Books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bernard gets more Christmas Spirit than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Manny Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ladymoonray

 

 

"No. Absolutely not. No way." Bernard slammed the crumpled cigarette packet down on the desk in front of him to emphasize his feelings of extreme negativity on the subject in question.

He shoved a fag into his mouth, and flicked the lighter viciously several times until it sneezed out a trickle of flame. He inhaled deeply, "Well...maybe if..." he paused, shook his head firmly, "Actually, it's still no. Never."

"No? You haven't even heard my side of the story!" Manny tried to look as dignified and indignant as an aging hippy clone in a Santa suit and false beard could. He continued, "You know what I think? I think you were born old and mean - you've never felt the joy and wonder of being a child, so you can't possibly understand that for some of us life is a thing of hope," arm raise, "hope and...and...dreams -" noble chin tilt. "and some of us need a little extra cash to drag ourselves out of hardship and into the stars..." A halo of light played briefly around his lopsided Santa hat before fizzling quietly.

Bernard as usual appeared completely unmoved.

"A child? A _child?_ " he was obviously several sentences behind present tense, and fixating on the one word that made sense to him, "I remember being one of those.." Bernard flapped his hands about like he was waving away an importunate street beggar, "those... little things. Ankle biters." His accent became a little more pronounced with distaste.

"It was just Ma and the twelve of us living in a godforsaken hovel on the wrong side of town. Well, not the wrong side, so much. More the decaf coffee of bad neighbourhoods really."

He paused, considering. "And okay, okay, maybe not a hovel. But we only had the one bathroom, and _that_ was down at the bottom of the garden through the bear traps. I remember one night when our Nan caught her bloomers on the razor wire... oh how we laughed." He lifted the bottle again and then leant forward, eyelids fluttering as he tried to focus on the figure perched on the chair across the table from him.

"The point is - the point is, Manny-me-lad." He flung a wavering finger about dangerously, "That you had it easy. You don't know what hard," hiccup, "ship is. I remember, one time..." hiccup, "One time when I was a boy. A wee thing no higher than your knee, I was." His eyes glazed over with memory, "I was at school. Nasty place." He shivered dramatically, almost tipping the bottle over. The slosh of wine that erupted from the neck as he caught it put his fag out, and he looked at it sadly before stubbing it out on the desk and patting his jacket for another one.

"There were strange and unnatural tortures...gym class, and...and...home economics. I tell you, I still can't look a flan dish in the eye. Anyway...where was I...oh yes, at school. I remember..." he remembered he'd left the pack on the desk in front of him, and happily extricated another rumpled cig, coughing loudly as he lit it until his bronchial pipes were satisfactorily coated with whatever had been floating on the top of his lungs.

"Remember what?", Manny said patiently when nothing further was forthcoming.

"I don't know, it was that horrible I don't remember. I've blotted it out of my mind from the horror - that's how hard my life was."

"So...can I have my raise then?"

"A raise? Do I look like I'm made of money? No, you may not have your raise."

Manny's face fell, and he scratched miserably at the padding under the red felt jacket, which itched constantly.

"Come on Bernard, I've been working here for three years now, and I'm _always_ the one who wears the stupid Santa outfit - I think that deserves some financial compensation on its own."

"Don't complain - you could be the Yuletide bookworm." Bernard sniggered.

That was frankly the last straw.

"Right. _That_...is the last straw. I think it's _your_ turn now. I don't get paid enough for this." Manny pulled off the hat and flung it down onto the desk in front of Bernard. He stood up and folded his arms belligerently.

Bernard looked at the hat with as much dislike as if it had been an actual customer. "I would rather eat a Christmas tarantula off the back of a dead badger with a piece of holly stuck up my backside."

"Christmas tarantula?" Manny was a little thrown.

"You know - Christmas tarantula - what you get in your stocking at Christmas when you haven't been a good...' he waved his hands around irritably. "Anyway, this is beside the point."

"And the point is?"

"The point is there is no money, we're broke, flat, bottomed out, bankrupt, financially crippled, fiscally...oh, hi Fran."

"Hi. Date. Emergency. Twenty." She flurried up to the desk and held out her hand expectantly.

"Nice to see you too." Bernard's tone was snide, but he obliged anyway.

"Ta-da. Thanks!" Fran twirled the cash and checked the watermark against the light before stuffing it in a pocket and slamming the door behind her.

"I thought we were broke!"

"We are now. I'm off for a drink. Accountancy makes my head hurt. Look after the shop, will you."

With a swish and a clatter and a swirl of coat and scarf Bernard sailed out the door like a drunken galleon after Fran, leaving Manny seething in the shop behind him.

xxx

" _I_ am the _ghost_ of _Christmas_ future."

The figure in front of him seemed... _indistinct_...but again that could be the result of his diligent efforts at the pub before they'd kicked him out at last orders. Bernard sat up straighter in his chair. Some vagrant must have followed him in - almost as bad as the bloody customers, they were, never giving him a moment's peace.

"Shop's closed. It's Christmas, apparently, so please bugger off and spread your cheer or whatever it is you do somewhere else."

"I am the _ghost_ of Christmas _future_." The man seemed rather insistent about this. He was rather dressed for his role too, Bernard noticed - looked like something out of a Dickens illustration at any rate, with his grey hair and suit and hat. He even had a silver-topped cane, which he'd leaned carefully against Bernard's desk.

"I don't care if you are the fairy on top of the Trafalgar Square Tree. Go. Away."

The self-proclaimed ghost looked a little nonplussed. "No, no, you don't understand. You're supposed to be scared, you see, and then I tell you about the vision and then you see it and you repent and I get my bonus." He said this quite fast and with a little querulous tremor in his voice, as if affirming to himself that this should indeed be the case.

"Your bonus? What?" Bernard closed his eyes really tightly, as if wishing him out of existence. After a minute of this, he cautiously opened one eye, and then the other, and sighed as he saw the man-ghost-thing in front of him still. "Okay. If you're not going to bless my current existence by leaving -- You say you're the...what...the ghost?" the man nodded vigorously, pleased he'd got this far, "of Christmas Future?" Bernard looked him up and down doubtfully. "Hold on, hold on...aren't there supposed to be, like, three of you or something? I distinctly remember there being three in all the stories."

"Cutbacks - holiday working hours. We don't mind either way really, but the unions are murder on overtime right now. Anyway..."

"I don't believe you're a ghost."

"Wha...?"

"I don't be- _lieve_ you're a _ghost_." Bernard enunciated very carefully for the benefit of this strange and annoying apparition.

"Oh, um..."

Bernard leaned forward and gave him a smart slap across the cheek.

"Ow!"

"Ha! See? - see what I did there? - I hit you! Proves you're not a ghost. Now bugger off and peddle your fortunes somewhere that's not my shop. Go. Shoo."

He'd moved back a pace, and was eyeing Bernard a bit more warily, but still showed no signs of actually leaving, as such, unfortunately. "Actually, I'm afraid that doesn't prove anything." He looked down at the floor and all but shuffled his feet, "It's all rather embarrassing really, but I'm suffering from a case of overactive ectoplasm, and I'm rather stuck being quite corporeal at the moment. Real bother." He looked shamefaced. "And really, I know I should have grown out of it by now at my age, but what can you do?" He lifted his hands despairingly at Bernard.

Despite himself, Bernard was intrigued, "What - you can't do any ghosty stuff? Turn into a skeleton or pull your head off or walk through a door or something?"

The old man looked so miserable now -- shaking his head at each suggestion -- that Bernard suddenly felt rather sorry for him. "Aah, don't worry old boy, happens to the best of us, I suppose. Whisky?"

The figure opposite him brightened..."Ooh...well, alright, maybe just the one then. It's been 200 years since I last had a glass" He reached for it rather too eagerly, then stopped himself and looked warningly at Bernard. "Oh, and no bad puns about _spirits_ , either." When Bernard shrugged, the ghost picked up the glass with a little difficulty - he seemed to find it hard to grasp, like it was terribly slippery.

Bernard saluted him with his own tumbler of happiness. "My lips are sealed, well, apart from the fags and the booze, of course."

The rest of the evening was spent in a happy blur of alcohol and off-colour gags about leprechauns and bogles and the dating habits of the recently undead. And Bernard didn't notice at what point he'd been left in peace to snore happily into the order book left open by the phone.

xxx

The next morning Bernard woke up in his bed with the mother of all hangovers and a rather fetching tinsel necklace. He coughed and sputtered and made his way downstairs, using braille to compensate for sleep-clogged eyes that he couldn't quite get to focus on anything. Eyes still shut, he poured himself his morning tea, and thus completely failed to notice that the kitchen was now a rather fetching shade of duck-egg blue. He staggered out into the front, clutching his mug with shaking hands and feeling quite overcome with a sense of his own accomplishment.

"Hi darling, I'm back...what _are_ you doing wearing that old coat? I thought I'd thrown it out months ago? And don't forget we've got Christmas with the family tonight and Mother simply won't tolerate tardiness. You _know_ how particular she is."

"Wha... huh?" Bernard prised open his eyelids and frantically tried to focus. A strange and formidable woman was bearing down on him through the doorway of his bookshop...only it wasn't his shop any more. It was...it was...

He struggled for the right words...it was _clean_ and everything was _labelled_ and _painted_ and there were _motivational posters_ and a _kiddies korner_. His brain whimpered and tried to curl up in the back of his skull.

"What have you done with my _shop?_ "

"Don't be silly, Bernard, it's been like this since your last useless assistant left. I don't know _how_ you managed before I came along." She planted an absent peck on the top of his head as she swanned past on her way to the back. It felt like a kiss from a viper.

The next few hours were spent in a nastily sober state of straitjacketed orderliness where there was too much being nice to customers and not enough indulging in addictive vices (i.e. none whatsoever). Bernard had got to the point where he was flinching every time he heard a noise from behind. The bell on the door was also making him jump, and he was having to try and school his expression down from abject terror to mild panic so as not to scare people off (he'd been told off about this once and was not keen to repeat the experience). Manny's handy spare copy of The Little Book of Calm was nowhere to be found - probably in the same place his emergency Blue Nun had disappeared to.

He stopped mid-jump when he recognised the latest figure pushing its wintry way through the door (now painted a friendly blue, with a big cheery 'Welcome' sign that made Bernard shudder).

"You!" Bernard stood up and advanced on the old man, wagging a shaking finger at him threateningly. "Take me back! I'm _sober_ and I'm in _hell._ "

The ghost looked at him smugly, held his ground. "Thought you didn't believe in me?"

"This is a _nightmare._ I want everything back the way it was. You broke it. Fix it...fix it!" Bernard was shouting in his face and he'd grabbed the lapels of the ghost's morning coat with almost religious fervour.

"Alright, alright, don't get your knickers in a twist..." The ghost adjusted his jacket fussily, ignoring Bernard.

"You realise according to my contract you've still got another..." he reached into his coat for a pocket watch, and consulted it with a raised eyebrow, "...six hours left here. There's dinner with the family still and you've got to share the news of your impending offspring and file your taxes..."

Bernard just glowered at him.

The ghost sighed. "Oh, okay, whatever. No one ever appreciates an artist. So -- first you have to hit yourself hard over the head with something hard. Book'll be your best bet here, I think."

"Will that fix it?" Bernard was as eager as a puppy at the slightest ray of hope, and he scrabbled at the nearest shelf.

"No, but it'll make me feel better about your slap last night."

Bernard shot him a nasty look. "Just fix it before I personally test out the theory that you can only die once. On you." He spoke through gritted teeth, and hefted the book in what he hoped was a menacing fashion.

"Oh, all right, if you must spoil my fun..." The ghost seemed a little put out, but made a funny gesture with his hands at Bernard which seemed to do something...

He thought it was just the ghost fading out and then he realised that the whole room was going dark just as the floor dropped out from underneath him.

xxx

Bernard swam frantically through a wriggly flashback fade and landed gasping in his chair, paperclips stuck to his cheek and a puddle of drool in the exact shape of Africa on the desk next to the order book.

"Manny! Manny? You there?" His call was frantic.

"What? What?" Manny came clattering down the stairs and skidded to a halt next to Bernard's chair, craning his neck round like an agitated heron in search of the panic. "What's wrong? What? What?"

Bernard stared at him as if he'd never seen anything so wonderful. "Thank god! I thought you'd gone and I was married to evil incarnate and she made me file things and she tidied the shop and it was _awful._ There were _children."_ He scrabbled in the till for cash. "Here...here - take it, take it all. Write yourself a cheque, I don't care" He shoved a handful of the till's contents at Manny

Manny looked down at his hands. "Um, thanks, but what am I supposed to do with - " he sorted through the scraps, "...an IOU dated 1998 from Fran .... two...cancelled tickets to Alan Partridge and a very dead mouse?" He gestured with it to Bernard, holding it upright by its tail. It _did_ seem rather stiff.

"Oh, yes. Well..." Bernard scratched the back of his neck a bit shamefacedly. "the moment we do have cash you can have it. And the raise, whatever you want."

"Well...this _is_ a change of heart...but thanks, I'll take the cash and the raise with pleasure." He swaggered around the table to plop himself in the chair opposite Bernard.

"I knew you'd see reason eventually, I guess I'm too valuable an em-ploy-ee to risk losing." He breathed ostentatiously on his nails and buffed them on his shirt.

Bernard looked at him a little more sourly now that his body's natural alcohol balance was reasserting itself. "Yes, well, there was a ghost and...and...it's all getting a bit fuzzy but it seemed to be important at the time. He grasped feebly at the important issue in this situation. "Anyway...tea, I need tea. I've been through _trauma_...even if the details escape me right now," he spoke a little more slowly, looking puzzled.

"Right-oh, tea coming up," Manny practically bounced off the chair, glad to be of help, "I'll put some extra sugar in if you think it'll help..." he looked at Bernard, changed his mind, "no, you're right, whisky it is." He bobbed off through the curtains, hair wisping cheerily behind him.

When he came back ten minutes later, Bernard was lying on the couch, fast asleep. Manny put the tea down carefully, and tiptoed over to the door to switch off the lights and flip the door sign from 'closed' to 'closed'. He disappeared back through the doorway and came back with an old blanket, which he laid carefully over the unconscious figure before heading into the kitchen to make a start on their Christmas dinner.

All was quiet then for a while apart from the occasional tarry wheeze from Bernard and the muffled clatter of pans and dishes on the other side of the curtains. Then the front door opened slowly, just a fraction, and a grey figure slipped through. He stood for a while, leaning contemplatively on his silver-topped cane while he stared down at Bernard with a calculating expression on his face. He clicked his fingers, and nodded, then he turned and left as silently as he'd arrived.

Bernard slept on, oblivious to his new outfit in very festive fire-engine red complete with beard. The glue should only take four or five days tops to wear off. Probably.

 

 

 


End file.
